Baghdad, July 31(ANI): Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said he is reviving a stalled deal to buy multi-million-dollar fighter jets from the United States and affirmed the need for American trainers to help Iraqi forces operate and maintain the 36 F-16s.
However, Maliki avoided saying whether trainers would be active-duty troops or private contractors and sidestepped the key question of whether American military personnel would be asked to remain after an end-of-year deadline for withdrawing.
The aforesaid question is Iraq's top political issue and is being widely debated among the country's leaders.
The fighter jet deal more than doubles the number of aircraft that Iraq had initially planned to buy.
"We should provide Iraq with the means, including warplanes, to protect its sovereignty," the China Daily quoted Al- Maliki, as saying.
His statement marks a turnabout from earlier this year, when Baghdad abandoned the deal and decided instead that it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on food rations for poor Iraqis.
Al-Maliki did not say when the purchase of the F-16s would proceed, where the money would come from or how it would affect other government programmes already in place.
Iraqi officials have predicted that the 325-member parliament will reject extending the US military mission in Iraq, but Al-Maliki said: "the presence of trainers does not need a parliament vote."
He appears to be preparing the Iraqi public for some type of American military presence in Iraq after 2011, but has been trying to paint the American military as a training force as opposed to combat units.
Asking for active-duty US military forces to stay on in Iraq after war- years would be a difficult sell for Maliki when it comes to the Iraqi public.
Al-Maliki defended his decision to have political leaders weigh in on whether troops should stay instead of settling it alone, as according to him, it is a "big national issue that is related to sovereignty." (ANI)
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